Usurpers of Heaven
by Akallas von Aerok
Summary: When man was given immortality, it changed everything. A single immortal, capsuleers as we call them, can bring prosperity and destruction to colonies. A squad of them lay destruction to anything that stand in their way. A legion of capsuleers make fleets and stake sovereignty out of the reaches of empires to match them. What effect does an empire of capsuleers have?
1. Prologue & Contact

Disclaimer: I own nothing except CalEx -it's not even real btw.

Disclaimer 2: There will be things that are different from either EVE Online and Mass Effect universes.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Prologue:<strong>_  
><em><strong>History<strong>_

* * *

><p><strong>YC 112<strong>

Caldari State Wormhole Exploration and Exploitation Corporation is established by three capsuleers*. They scour through most wormholes found in the Caldari State, gaining wealth and influence with each day.

* * *

><p><strong>YC 113<strong>

CalEx moves away from Caldari State to Tribute Region in the nullsec (no security) space. Their settling in the Tribute Region, however, brought about conflict between them and one of the region's contenders, Tactical Narcotics Team. Specifically, a corporation specializing in wormhole exploration like the CalEx within that alliance. They end up engaging in an all-out battle between the two corporations.

CalEx loses the battle and are forced to retreat through a wormhole after learning that the system where the battle took place had its stargates ambushed by the TNT.

CalEx and its hundred capsuleers disappeared that day, never to be heard of again.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 0<strong>

CalEx members were shot out of the wormhole they had desperately taken through, and ended up in a Deep Space. They quickly scanned their location in the universe ... only to come up empty on any other locations of wormholes similar to the one they had taken.

Wormhole closes.

CalEx members, seeing no other option, decide to explore together. They come upon a unpopulated system with a habitable planet. To their expected dismay, the system lacked a stargate, the form of method found in every single star system in New Eden. Wherever they were, they were not home.

This led to the members of CalEx to fear something they had not feared in long time: death. Capsuleers of New Eden had the privilege of being immortals through uses of neurologically, conscious-transferred clones. These clones were made in clone facilities owned and operated by many factions, but CalEx no longer had access to such a facility. CalEx's priority quickly focuses on making a clone facility.

They start colonizing the planet with the help of few drones they had in store.

The planet is named Ashura Prime.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 1<strong>

CalEx members decide to rename themselves, as their current name was unfit for their now purposeless activity. They name themselves the Free State of Ashura, naming it after their new home and desire to make a nation free of struggles that they themselves had to experience through.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 3<strong>

Cloning Facility is established and successfully tested; the capsuleers were no longer going to die by lack of clones.

Seeing as their numbers are low in a unknown universe, the leader of the Free State, Akashic Rintalo, suggests and implements the usage of cloning facility to make artificial humans from crossings of DNAs present in the ethnically various original members. They give "birth" to twelve new humans, of which seven became capsuleers. The process of introducing new citizens through clone technology becomes known as Clone Populating.

First non-clone baby is born.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 5<strong>

The population of Ashura Prime has risen to twelve thousand. Of them, a thousand are capsuleers with the old hundred still very much active in the fledgling state.

Constitution of the State is made to ensure equality. A parliament system government is set up.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 16<strong>

The population has risen to two hundred thousand. Three thousand citizens come together by the end of the year to colonize a new planet in a system less than 20 lightyears from Ashura Prime.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 19<strong>

Colonization effort of T-1ZU7 goes smoothly. The colonists name the planet after the ship they came in, Vigil. This practice of naming the planet after the ship the colonists came upon becomes a tradition.

The population of Ashura Prime reach a million. The usage of cloning facilities to make new humans decreases with large amount of existing citizens.

The population of Vigil reaches one thousand three hundred.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 20<strong>

Celebration of Founding Festival is established in Ashura Prime, and Vigil quickly adapts the festival.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 21<strong>

First death occurs by a construction accident.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 42<strong>

One of the Old Powers, a capsuleer who is only referred by his peers and those younger than him as "Crazy Geneticist," perfects genetic manipulation for cloning purposes. He also perfects gene mixture technology, and his first mixed gene product was a three inch big, six-legged, three tailed lizard with two pairs of leathery wings. He was reluctant to attempt gene mixture on humans.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 100<strong>

Free State of Ashura now has seven systems under its control with a total of nine colonized planets and satellite bodies.

The population of the Free State reaches a total of three million.

Capsuleer population to normal population is **1:10,000**.

_Survey shows that when regular people were given the chance to become capsuleers but were given time and information about capsuleers, more than 90% reject for one reason: We don't want to see everyone we love die._

* * *

><p><strong>Year 122<strong>

Terraforming technology becomes perfected.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 123<strong>

Capital class spaceship technology becomes perfected.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 190<strong>

The Free State of Ashura becomes unstable breifly. The Old Powers, the original capsuleers, has held power for a very long time, and refused to let power transfer over to the younger generations. The Old Powers reason that their reluctance to hand over power comes from the fact that the Old Powers are still young and fresh like the rest of the Free State's citizens. The Old Powers appease the rest of the State by allowing themselves to become more of an advisors ... who still has votes in the Parliament.

The population of the Free State reaches a total of a hundred million.

Around this time, capsuleers began to take on a more large organized group approach.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 197<strong>

The introduction of several laws regarding privacy results in a mass protest over many colonies, but none more so than Vigil, the first colony. Vigil's citizens protested heavily with civil disobedience. Protesters and local police force clash at the center of Vigil's main spaceport city. At first, it was simple show of presence -We're here so do not ignore us. However, one police makes mock of the portesters, and the protesters returned the gesture. It degenerates into arguement and then into violence. Seventeen die in what becomes known as Protest Accident of 197 SY (standard year).

Violence churns up the entire planet, and the Vigil Rebellion breaks out.

State Navy ships are quickly assembled, and upon arrival of the planet's orbit, forms a blockade over the rebellious garden world with the demand to calm down. This severely affects the planet as it lacked significant farm lands. The blockade, which stopped the trade of foodstuff into Vigil, causes mass hunger on the planet. Within a month, the Vigil rebels surrender. Because the rebels were reasonable and had not caused any form of death nor other dark aspects of rebellions, most perpetrators are released with light fine.

Clone Populating is stopped.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 212<strong>

The first capsuleer alliance is born of seventeen corporations and a thousand capsuleers. This alliance, Laser Fest Alliance, colonizes a system just outside of then Free State territory, and proclaims themselves a sovereign state under the name of LaFa Tribe.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 217<strong>

The Crazy Geneticist, the one responsible for perfection of gene mixture technology, finally attempts a human gene mixture. The result of his first successful subject -an unborn fetus at the time of experiment- is additions of feline years and tail in replacement of regular human years. He confirms genetic compatibility with regular "unaltered" subjects.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 221<strong>

The Free State of Ashura now controls a hundred seventy systems with two hundred and thirteen planets and satellite bodies.

The population on Ashura Prime alone is three billion. The total population of the Free State itself reaches a total of seventeen billion.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 240<strong>

Capsuleer alliance becomes a trend among the capsuleers. Many leave the service of the State and private corporations and mercenaries to form their own alliances to become a power outside of the State's territory.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 283<strong>

War between Laser Fest Alliance and its ally, Brown Back Beast, and Green Acid Genocidals and its allies, the Free Runners and the Black Junk-Fleet, erupts over a resource-rich system of Prosperity in the region of White Seas. This is the first war of its kind since the Old Powers had left the New Eden. On the LFA side, there were ten thousand capsuleers. On the GAG side, there were twelve thousand. The Battle for Prosperity 413 starts on the planet of Prosperity and ends three standard days later with the loss of the LFA. LFA's heavy losses in the Prosperity pushes them out of the White Sea region in the following battles and skirmishes. By the end of the year, LFA is forced to disband by the GAG and its allies. LFA's territories were evenly distributed between the three alliances.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 319<strong>

The colonists of Sunbae find the ruins of a long-forgotten civilization. Two ruins, in fact. The Free State's top brass -aka the Old Powers- quickly send out their top analysts and decoders to these ruins to decipher the data and whoever these people were. They try to keep a lid on it, but the media gets a wind of it, and all of Free State becomes aware of the ruins within a week of its initial discovery.

The datas are deciphered within weeks, thanks to advanced wetware frames -supercomputers whose sole purpose is processing whatever data they receive- and AI's in the Free State's possession. What they find, however, causes fear.

Protheans. Advanced races. Mass Effect Technology. Mass Relays. Invasion. Reapers. Powerful race. No mercy. Death of the entire civilization.

One of the analysts, however, question whether or not these Protheans really died.

"Someone had to write how their civilization died. Who wrote them?" -Janas Svverkii

That one comment spurred the Free State to send out massive amounts of scouts, public, military, and private, in search of any survivors of the Prothean race. From this data cache, the Free State also learns of the Mass Relays, and learns to use them. At the same time, the State itself prepares itself for war against the Reapers.

_Unknown to the public, the second ruin site was that of another race. This race predates the existence of the Protheans. But the _nature _of this civilization kept the New Power and the Old Power to keep a tight lid on it while conducting secret research, analysis, and search._

**Year 330**

Results of scouting came in. They had indeed found survivors. A total of seventeen stasis pods were discovered. All of them children. Unfortunately, the stasis pods were locked, and researchers were assigned to have it unlocked.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 337<strong>

In seven years, researchers and engineers were able to determine how to use mass effect technology ... except that it was unnecessary. The mass effect technology was _behind _in terms the technology that the Free State had possessed since the beginning and has been improving upon. Even the Old Powers were dismissive of the technology after realizing that their original ships, many of which were now in museums, were better than the mass effect technology. Also, Mass Relays were just much larger and clunkier version of their stargates, and deemed useless. A tourist site of archaic technology, at best.

_The second civilization's data cache was decoded. Unfortunately, their foretelling made the Reapers seem ... petty, but the threat foretold by this civilization is long gone and never to return._

_At the same time, Free State learned of the second civilization's name, Guoloers. Unlike the Protheans, this race had confined itself to Sunbae with limited resources but had reached heights of bioorganic technology to overcome their lack of resource. Unfortunately, they were wiped out by their own weapons. Nuclear weapons to be precise. The lead researcher stated that the civilization must have existed millions of years ago._

* * *

><p><strong>Year 344<strong>

After years of research and experiment, Free State was able to undo the lockdown on the stasis pods, and released the Prothean children from the pods. Twelve were males, and five were females.

This First Contact caused massive public attention upon these children. To avoid the children from being too influence, the matter was classified until the children are of age. They were then taken to a safe location for their growth and new education.

_The Guoloer technology, unlike the Prothean's mass effect technology, were not something that the Free State's leaders were familiar with. While the Old Powers were aware that other races like the Joves back in their home had gene manipulation technology for thousands of years(who were also responsible for the immortality of the capsuleers), the level of bioorganic manipulation that the Guoloer technology cache had made the Jovians look silly. From the Guoloer's technology cache, the Free State was able to implement Project FullMetal, a project aimed at Free State's experiments to create their own versions of the Guoloer technology._

* * *

><p><strong>Year 349<strong>

The total population of the Free State reaches a hundred billion.

_The Guoloer's data cache became unusable. __Despite this, Project FullMetal is a success. The Free State successfully creates a thirty meter tall, semi-sapient cybernetic mecha for combat. The State goes on to continue to improve their version of the Organic Mech Tech._

* * *

><p><strong>Year 370<strong>

The seventeen Protheans reaches maturity, and were integrated into mainstream society. The Protheans, given the nickname "New Pro's," were able to be integrate easily. To promote growth of Prothean population Clone Populating is brought back with gene donations from all of the Protheans.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 380<strong>

The Free State's population reaches a total of hundred and seven billion. Of them, Protheans make up forty.

The Ashura League sought to expand their territory towards the center of the galaxy, but were blocked by the constant warring territories of the capsuleer alliances. The colonies demand expansion, and it does not take long before the Ashura League declares war on the neighboring capsuleer alliances. Such action shocks the entire capsuleer population. Ashura League - Grimoire Vigilantes War lasts seven days; the GV's leader submit their territory to the League under the condition that all of the GV's capsuleers are given sizable properties from the annexed territory (by sizable, GV's leader meant a half a planet per capsuleer).

* * *

><p><strong>Year 400<strong>

Devan-Vjuuskar Rebellion breaks out in the galactic south corner of Ashuran territory. A total of seventeen planets in close proximity band together to form a "State of Vjuuskar" and secede from the Free State. The rebellion had been planned for long by its leaders, which became obvious in the first battle between Ashura and Vjuuskar.

Battle of Gin 400 is a victory for Ashura but only by a slight margin. Ashura loses two titans and seventeen dreadnoughts while the Vjuuskar loses three titans and sixteen dreadnoughts.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 412<strong>

Devan-Vjuuskar Rebellion ends after the total subjugation of the rebellious planets, execution of the rebel leaders, and the surrender of the capsuleers who took up the arms of Vjuuskar. Total loss of life is estimated to be a billion, and collateral damage is estimated to be thirty trillion Intersterllar Kredits (ISK), which is enough to buy a planet and build a metropolis.

To prevent further rebellion, Ashura allows minor states to rise up within it while controlling the military.

List of Intra-States/Systems/Colonies/Position(Relative to State) - Orientation/Population(Billions):  
>Ashura1/8/State-Middle Center/33  
>Junsung20/26/State-Upper Northeast/16  
>Vjuuskar4/6/State-Lower South southeast/10  
>Devan3/4/5/ State-Lower Lower South Center/4  
>Savvoire16/19/State-Middle West/30  
>King46/50/State-Lower East/37  
>Heeisgh17/30/State-Lower Southeast/ 25  
>Versinc11/11/State-Upper Center/16  
>Aub-Shun15/19/State-Lower Center/33  
>Suh7/11/State-Lower Northwest/24  
>Trinity20/23/State-Center North Northwest/21  
>Crab Claw19/30/State-Upper East/26

* * *

><p><strong>Year 415<strong>

The Free State of Ashura officially renames itself as Ashura League. The government structure remains that of a Representative Parliament without a prime minister.

The Old Power is still active, and the New Power's original members have been reduced to half, either pushed out of the political arena by rivals or because they grew bored wary of the political fields. This and the passage of time of the state encourages the League to place new Powers. As a result, the Third Power is created, composed of forty-five members, who are in voted into position every three years.

Sven Arrerun, a member of the Old Power, dies in a spaceship explosion, and his clones were destroyed in the same explosion when the explosion took out the space station that housed the spaceship, a four kilometer long pleasure cruiser, goes up in flames. This same station was the only station that Sven Arrerun had his clones on. He is the first of the Old Power to die.

Total population is estimated to be around 280 billion.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 416<strong>

First Contact with an unknown race on the galactic northern border of the Free State. The capsuleer who initiated the First Contact was fired upon. Her ship, an Ashura Prime design series destroyer-class, was fired upon by those she initiated the call with. She reacted to the hostility by using her laser-mounted railguns to completely destroy the three ships she fought against.

The unknown race, as the Free State later found out, was called the Batarian Hegemony.

* * *

><p><strong>Year 418<strong>

Within the following months and years, more Batarians ships were sighted on the border, and some even participated in piracy. The League sent out scouts to find any of the Batarian worlds to initiate a diplomacy. However, when they found one, instead of a greeting that should be given to a diplomat, the diplomats were met with mass accelerators. The League attempted seven more times, but all were met with similar results. And while the diplomats met little success, their pirates continued to hound the spacelanes and defenseless planets for slaves.

In one of these attacks, several of Old Power and New Power's descendants, all under sixteen year old, die by batarian hands.

* * *

><p><em>"Are you sure that this is a wise decision?"<em>

_"...Yes."_

_"How come you ask such a question, Allessia? We know that these Batarians are technologically inferior yet they prey upon our people for slaves. They do not communicate with us, nor do they stay out of our territory. They also took your great-granddaughter, not to mention hundreds of our citizens! It's time we give them a taste of their own medicine."_

_"I agree."_

_"I as well."_

_"Then it is settled?"_

_"Indeed."_

* * *

><p>Batarian Hegemony refuses to talk with the humans regarding the piracy.<p>

Angered by the batarian's refusal to communicate and their relentless piracy, the League eventually gave its military a go to strike back at the batarians.

"An Eye for an Eye, gentlemen and ladies. It's time they learned that idiom." -Kyelen Y'Seggeth, one of the Old Powers.

**Year 421**

Ashura-Batarian First Contact War breaks out.

The Batarian Hegemony deploys more than half of its navy on offensive, and sends them out to G-N410X.

* * *

><p><em><strong>System: <strong>G-N410X_  
><em><strong>Cluster:<strong> Feather Shield Belt_  
><em><strong>Region: <strong>Divine Wings_  
><em><strong>Sovereignty: <strong>Contested (Ashura League vs Batarian Hegemony)_

_The Batarian Hegemony's 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 12th, 13rd, 16th, and 17th Fleet sat upon orbit of the only habitable planet of the G-N410X system. Each fleet had four dreadnoughts, forty five cruisers, and a hundred fifty frigates, which made the total force of the Hegemony's offensive fleet a grand 32 dreadnoughts, 740 cruisers, and 1,700 frigates. It was one of the largest fleet to have been assembled by the batarians._

_Batarians knew that for the humans to launch an attack on the Hegemony, the Relay 409 of G-N410X system was a crucial point of passage. The Hegemony had intel that while the League had miniature versions of the Mass Relays, they only worked in system to system conjunction to each other - Batarian Hegemony, which had none of such mini-relays, was free from invasion by this route. The only way for the League to attack the Hegemony was to use this relay to enter the Hegemony territory._

_So even before the war was declared, on the humans' fifth attempt at diplomacy, the Hegemony ordered multitudes of their combat-ready ships to be deployed to the system to guard the Mass Relay._

_A light blue skinned batarian stood on the edge of his ship's bridge as he waited for the humans to come. War had been declare more than a day ago, and yet the humans have yet to attack._

_'Perhaps they did not even have their navy properly readied when the war was declared? That would make them a very stupid race... Perhaps I should reconsider buying one of them from the markets. Stupid slaves are worth less than keeping them,' he thought as he held his hands behind his back._

_"Sir."_

_The batarian turned around and looked at the officer, who was sitting by the radar controls. "Yes, what is it?"_

_"It seems that the human fleet has jumped into the system. Our ship's scanners indicate that their numbers are at least two hundred less than our fleet's," the green batarian radar officer reported to his superior. "They are also in FTL heading right for us."_

_The batarian captain smirked. Not only were these humans stupid, they were also brave! ...Not the best combo for a slave. 'It seems I won't be buying one, after all,' the captain thought as he leisurely began his walk back towards his seat._

_Once seated, he turned to the comm officer. "Alert all fleets. Get ready for battle."_

_"Aye, captain."_

_Within seconds of the order, the fleets of the Hegemony were slowly turning their ship towards where they had detected the human fleet to be emerging from._

_"Sir!"_

_The Grand Admiral turned to the radar officer. "What is it, officer?"_

_"They'll be here in less thirty seconds!"_

_The Grand Admiral snarled. "Don't joke with me, officer. Not even those Salarians with their ships can travel that fast in a fleet our size. They are at least on the other side of the system, and I know for a fact that this system is bigger than most."_

_"I am not joking, sir!"_

_The officer quickly linked what was on his screen to the Grand Admiral's private screen by his seat. The Grand Admiral looked at it, and he paled. "Great Spirit," he muttered._

_The ship's scanners were registering the League's entire fleet to be moving towards them at 4 AU/s. Such speed was only found in frigates, but even frigates could not hold such speed up for long. The fastest Batarian frigate flew at 3.1 AU/s, but could not maintain the speed for long because of the power requirements._

_But an entire fleet moving at that speed? Including, possibly, their dreadnoughts?_

_But what if it was composed of only frigates, which would explain the speed...?_

_That meant either a really stupid race in the later case or a huge technological disadvantage in that field for the Batarians if the first.._

_'And I highly doubt it's the later,' he thought as the timer went up._

_"Contact! There are at least a hundred dreadnoughts in their fleet!"_

_Everyone in bridge -as well as the bridges of all other ships of the Hegemony's fleet- paled. A hundred dreadnoughts? "What about the cruisers? And frigates?!"_

_"Too many frigates to count, sir! A lot of their frigates are covered behind their dreadnought front, but the cruiser numbers are at least a thousand!"_

_Now the Grand Admiral could see them as he saw the enemy approach them. They were like thousands of stars lined up in few rows on top of each other. Their fleet completely outnumbered the Hegemony's!_

_"Sir, we're reading their numbers spiking up! They're launching fighters!"_

_"Pick those fighters off!" the Admiral shouted. "And don't let any of those dreadnoughts get a shot at you!" Then he turned to his private screen as his bridge went wild. The ship's scans were reading an upwards of a thousand new contact. They were all fighters?_

_"They're launching missiles!"_

_Then suddenly, a beam of light shot towards them from the enemy lines, and struck one of the cruisers escorting the Grand Admiral's dreadnought. The beam raked through the cruiser's shield in less than ten seconds, and punched right through its armor._

_"The Unas report loss of half of their shield and all of their armor layers where they were struck! Only their hull is keeping them together!"_

_"The fighters are only fifty clicks away!"_

_"There's few frigates among the fighters!"_

_The Grand Admiral tightened the armrest of his chair. "Charge up the weapons! Launch our own fighters to counter them, and whatever those frigates are doing, don't let them among us!"_

* * *

><p><em>"Forerunners, are you in position?" Admiral Hexio Cruscence of the League's Trinity Offensive Fleet, Fleet Dragunov, asked of the capsuleer pilots who had launched himself forward along with the drones.<em>

_The batarian fleet was firing upon the drones and the frigates among them. While the frigates did their best to avoid the onslaught of missiles and mass accelerator railguns of the Hegemony fleet, the drones around them didn't. The combat drones popped like balloons flying against a hail of needles, and several of their explosion near the frigates took them together._

_"Almost there, sir! Five seconds!" the last of the frigate pilots reported. There was a moment of silence. "I'm here!"_

_"Good," he said as he sat within his capsule. "You know what that means, boys. Once he's among them, warp to him!"_

_"Yes, Admiral!"_

* * *

><p><em>The Grand Admiral waited as he watched the enemy fleet crawl their way towards theirs. He knew already that the Hegemony's fleet was on a losing fight from the start. He had seen the enemy use lasers, launch enough fighters to match the number of frigates the Hegemony had, and outnumber them by at least three to one.<em>

_But the Hegemony's dreadnoughts were still here. He knew that their main guns, the mass accelerator that was the backbone of each and every Batarian dreadnoughts, would be able to fight the humans. However, at the same time, he knew that he would only get a few shots off before they would have to retreat; losing any number of their ship would mean a defenseless Hegemony as this offensive fleet comprised of at least 70% of the Hegemony's navy. He had already ordered the cruisers and frigates to retreat, and even the dreadnoughts were ordered to slowly back away by firing their back thrusters so that they will be close to the Mass Relays before they jump away._

_But even as he ordered this, a corner of his mind was nagging about that lone frigate just as the enemy's first wave of smaller fighters were upon them. Already, the Batarian fleet was in a state of disarray as one by one, albeit slowly, their ships were reduced to dust by the focused fires of the drones. Tehy were, thankfully, easy to destroy. The Grand Admiral himself watched as his own ship fired off few shots of mass effect railguns to tear through one of the drones with ease._

_Why was that frigate charging in while the rest of their fleet flotilla did not? He had already ordered for his ships to shoot it down, but it moved too fast for even some of the rockets to catch it._

_His questions were quickly answered when frigate zoomed into the entire fleet along with thousand fighters... by the act of the entire Fleet Dragunov warping to the lone frigate's position._

_The two fleets were now less than ten kilometers apart._

_The Grand Admiral's eyes widened._

* * *

><p><em>The Admiral smirked viciously. "Tear into them!" he shouted from within his New Caldarian Raven-hull battleship. As he shouted, he activated all of his battleship's arsenal, unleashing eighteen cruise missiles at the battleship right in front of his battleship. Every single battleship under his command as well as the cruisers and frigates fired without mercy.<em>

_The first ships to go down were the "battleships" of the enemy fleet. Their shields, whether they were good or not, could not withstand sustained punishment of the missile, railguns, blasters, and rockets, and the firepower of the League consumed all of the drreadnoughts in hail of missile and bullet storm._

_The Batarian dreadnoughts all blew up in brilliant flashes of yellow and red as the League Navy's missiles found struck through their shield._

_Having lost the dreadnoughts with no escape in such close quarter combat, the rest of the Hegemony fleet opened fire upon the League's fleet. The closest of the League's "dreadnoughts" took mass accelerator rainstorm, and within less than a minute, its shields and armor both failed it, causing the ship to explode in brilliant white light._

_"Shit, they took out Dumb Brains!"_

_"Ignore their frigates, our own can take care of it! Focus fire on the closest cruisers to yourselves and work your way out! Stasis webify and warp disrupt those cruisers, and keep popping their fighters with rockets, boys!"_

* * *

><p><em>The Hegemony fleet was a state of disarray. Their admiral had been taken out less than an hour once the battle began. Their fleet had depended on their dreadnoughts to provide both defense and firepower, but with them gone along with their leader, the fleet was leaderless and powerless. Up close, the League fleet tore into them with hot knife through butter, but not without their own casualties. Several of their own "dreadnoughts" had been taken out when several frigates performed a kamikaze tactic, ramming their ship and activating all of their arsenal at once for a last boom.<em>

_But it just was not enough._

_When Hegemony ships tried to run, they were caught in some sort of webs that slowed them down. When they tried to warp, their Drives were unresponsive._

_The Hegemony's fleet was given no quarter even when begged to. They were picked off one by one until there was only debris to salvage ... which the League's salvage navy did._

* * *

><p><strong>Year 421, Month 10, Day 29<strong>

G-N410X Bloodbath of 421 results in the loss of half of Batarian Hegemony's total navy-though the League's navy was not without its own losses (the League lost four "dreadnoughts", thirty cruisers, and two hundred seven frigates). With the exception of few frigates, all of the ships were reduced to debris. The total loss strikes fear deep into the batarian hearts, and they scramble for evacuation to their strongest fortresses.

However, the League launched planetary invasion wherever they found a batarian authority, including moons and even asteroids. And wherever they went, the humans brought their monsters with them.

* * *

><p><em>The first planetary invasion took place less than two relay jumps from where the batarian fleet had met its doom on the batarian colony settled on the planet of Wuisuva. The Batarian Colonial High Command knew that without a fleet to properly defend their space, they were at a severe disadvantage. Their only saving grace was that there were slaves in the colonies that prevented the human fleet from bombarding them to the dark ages.<em>

_Wuisuva Colonial Army Feuda(Colonel) Uruhsav was in charge of defending this colony, not because he was the highest ranked officer but because the highest ranked officers had already fled from the colony as soon as they received news of the fleet's destruction. The leaders who were supposed to lead their people in times of need had fled. He had stayed behind, however. One could perhaps blame it on his lower class upbringings, and the fact that his own family -the extended family included- all lived on this colony. If he left, where would he go without his family? Everything was here. So he stood his ground as did the soldiers around him._

_The soldiers around him in this underground command center -and those on the field manning the streets, turrets, and tanks- waited as the human fleet flew into an orbit of the planet right above where their main settlement was._

_It was unnerving for Uruhsav. 'It probably is for the rest of the soldiers and slave-soldiers,' he thought absentmindedly. The humans were already stuff of nightmares with the ease they destroyed the batarian fleet, which was as big as the turian's, one of the Citadel Council races that ruled half of the galaxy and was in charge of the security of said council._

_Ping Ping Ping_

_"They're here," he hissed as the radars bleeped with a slow monotone. Soon, the bleeps became frequent as more human ships were detected by the radars. "...Only thirteen ships?" he muttered._

_One of the soldiers beside him, a Cursak (Captain), frowned. "Are they underestimating us that much?" the soldier muttered. "Kind of pisses me off."_

_Few others in the command room grunted in agreement._

_Then the radar screamed in a high pitch tone as it detected several objects launched from the biggest of the human ships._

_Uruhsav's four eyes widened. "They're bombarding us?!" he shouted in surprise._

_He and the rest of the soldiers in base watched on the radar as the object flew down the space between the ships and the batarian's main settlement with speeds only possible with kinetic bombardment projectiles._

_And then it struck._

_The entire base shook with awful shock and tremors as they withstood the attack of the human fleets, but once the tremors stopped, they did not continue._

_"Shit, those things were troops!" someone shouted in the command comm. "They're launching mechs to the surfa-"_

_"Infantry Squad 15 all gone!" someone in the background shouted. "Squad 1, 6, 7, 8, and 17 also unresponsive!"_

_"Oh my god, those things are alive!"_

_As if by some coincidence, a single camera screen was put on the main screen of the command base, and it featured the Organic Mechs of the Ashura League._

_Towering above the infantry and the tanks were muscular version of bipedal race that the batarians had been in war with for less than a month. They had five fingers and five toes on each of their hands and feet respectively. But unlike some of the humans that the batarians had enslaved, these mechs were scary. they had no visible cockpit, and the size of the mechs themselves gave no hint as to where the pilots were riding within._

_But the truly scary part of these mechs was the fact that had a mouth with four rows of cubic teeth like that of a predator. The same mouth of the particular mech on the screen of the batarian high command had gnashed corpses of batarian soldiers._

_And in the eyes of everyone watching the feed, the mech swallowed._

_And then let out a high pitch gurgle._

_'That shit just ate my men... and it's fuckin' laughing!' Uruhsav mentally screamed. However, he was shocked as the rest of the batarians.  
><em>

_The mech knelt down unto dying remnants of batarian soldiers he had smashed, and began to feast._

_"Shit, shit, shit!" they all heard someone, probably the man struggling in the mech's grasp on the command center's screen, struggle and cruse. "You monster! You ate my men!" he shouted as he pulled out a grenade, and activated it. Then he threw it deep into the mech's throat before he was killed by a bite severing his head from the body._

_Three seconds after the bite, the alien mech shook a little, as if it was shivering, before it opened its mouth, and bellows of black smoke flew out._

_The command center was silent. Was it dead?_

_The mech didn't move, and several batarians soldiers began to appear on the screen as they approached the mech cautiously._

_The mech moved ... and struck out to the soldiers to close to it, which was its arm length -a full slithering length of ten meters._

_"Switch the screen! Tell me how many of these mechs are on the surface!" Uruhsav commanded. One of the technicians in charge of the radar quickly moved images on his holocomputer before he (or she) pulled up the settlement wide map. "... Great Lon'va," he muttered after seeing the map. There were at least several dozens of such monsters roaming around. "They're everywhere!"_

_"One of our observation posts report the humans landing troops!"_

_"The west report at least forty troop transports!"_

_"North seventy! East is dark; none of our observers are there!"_

_"South reports nine! Each of those transports are carrying at least twenty of their soldiers!"_

_Uruhsav listened quietly even as he watched the radar pick up on the new enemy infantry. All around the edge of the radar map, he could see the human soldiers and mechs moving in with brutal speed, sometimes removing a whole building with the strengths of their monster mechs. They were heading quickly towards the center of the city, where civilian bunkers and slave stocks were._

_"They're going for the slaves! All troops ignore the ones going for the slave bunkers and destroy the ones approaching the command center and the civilian bunkers!"_

_BOOMMMM~!_

_Urusav docked underneath the small space on the electric battle plan table as the entire base shook. The foundation of the base cracked at their feet and the walls, and several chunks of rock fell, mostly harmlessly. He slowly stood back up from where he had ducked under. "What the fuck was-?"_

_"One of those core-damned monsters are on top of us!"_

_Then the pounding began._

* * *

><p><em>On the city itself where the human troops had landed on, batarians were coming to believe that they picked someone out of their league for a fight...<em>

_Human troopers were all wearing crisp edged armors in what could only be described as "red cube suits." The power suits of the humans were form fitting but had plenty of armor plating attached to them. There were no round corners anywhere except the elbow and the knee, where there were protective caps that encompassed the said region of body in a shallow curve. Their weapons were also as rigid and edgy as their suits._

_That was what Slave Hunter Gredii Vuiisac noted as he watched few of the human troopers pass underneath him on the street. He himself was on one of the highest floors possible so that he could snipe them down, but he was waiting. What was he waiting for? For the human troopers he was watching to get to the cross section of the city less than a hundred meters in the direction they were already walking towards. He and few of the other Salve Hunters and Slave Makers had planned this out. All of them would take positions to do most damage when the human troopers landed on the city._

_There were seven on each of the corner stores, just hiding behind counters and fallen desks and other debris. Three were hiding on the street itself, covering themselves with dust sheets and laying still next to turned over cars and whatever else that had been tossed aside in those ... monsters' rampage._

_He himself was in one of the stores, on the seventh floor of a Guyivii flat noodle franchise, with a single table between him and the streets outside to protect him from whatever these troopers would shoot to kill him. He was also hidden from sight -thermal or raw- by the raw heat being expelled from the damaged oven next to him and the darkness that the broken roof had caved in form a small compact space just next to the said oven._

_60 meters..._

_He quietly pressed the talk button on the headgear he was wearing. "Be careful, boys. You saw how these guys ripped into a battalion less than half an hour ago," he whispered. "Aim for their head. No matter how strong their gears are, it won't last much under constant fire."_

_40 meters..._

_"So, what's the plan?"_

_Vuiisac almost jumped up and shouted in surprise and he pulled out his sidearm to shoot only to stop himself halfway when he saw that it was a batarian like him. "Core-damned, son of a bitch!" he hiss-whispered. "You scared me to death!"_

_The batarian, a guard grunt by the looks of it, scoffed. "Hurry up and tell me the plans."_

_30 meters..._

_"Nothing too much," he replied as he pointed to the human troopers. "When those fuckers get to the center of the cross section, we're just gonna bombard them from all sides."_

_The grunt looked at him for a few seconds before shaking his head and looking away._

_Then he spoke up in a completely foreign language._

_20 meters..._

_"Oi, what the hell did you just say? Is that a code?"_

_The batarian looked back at him, but this time, he had a small knife out. A chill ran down Vuisac's spine when the grunt spoke up. "No, but I guess it is for your kind." Then he thrust, and Vuiisac was too slow to dodge._

_STAB_

* * *

><p><em>Major Junsoo Suh had served in the Ashura League's Blank Shadow Legion for the last twenty-five years, and during that time, he had accomplished much. He had participated in Second League Invasion of Bad Dog Alliance and the land fights on planets held by the said capsuleer alliance. He had tracked down, identified, categorized, and body tagged multiple illegal slave, drug, and smuggling operations within the League territory. He was an experienced killer and a loyal patriot.<em>

_And invading this planet was the easy of them so far._

_He scoffed pulled out the knife from the batarian sniper's face. The batarian died before he fell backward and struck the ground with a sickening thud. He looked at the batarian once more before turning away..._

_...And showing off the small metal implant protruding from the back of his neck._

* * *

><p><em>On the street itself, firefight had already begun. When the batarians struck at the human troopers with guns and grenades, the human troopers stood there and took them all. The bullets flipped them around like ragdolls with the sheer kinetic energy they possessed, and the grenades ripped at them with violent explosion. By the end of the batarians' seventh second ambush, there was only a large smoking crater at the center of the cross section from more than seven grenades they had tossed.<em>

_"Hell yeah!" one of the batarians shouted as he jumped out from where he had been hiding for the last half an hour. "Finally we killed one of those slave-loving-"_

_BAM_

_The batarian flew backward for a meter before landing with a thud on the cracked concrete, and there was a hole big as the batarian's own fist eye straight through the dead center of the head._

_The others, who were also getting out, scrambled back to where they had been hiding in, only to realize seconds later that the human troopers -who were miraclously alive- knew where they were because they had ambushed them._

_"Get the fuck out of here!" one of the higher tanking Slave Hunters shouted. "Give them suppressing fire!" And then he stuck his head over the float mobile, only to get a grenade to his face._

_BOOM_

_Huamn troopers, still in their jagged black armor glory, silently walked out of the smoking crater with their guns raised up._

_"That was a bad mistake, fuckers," one of them growled in perfect batarian tongue._

* * *

><p><em>Elsewhere in the city, other batarians had resorted to a more brutal method.<em>

_They fire a tank shell._

_The engagement between the invaders and the defenders had occurred in on the city's main road, which was covered with buildings on top, allowing the batarians to roll out tanks. In this particular engagement, the batarians had brought out three of their tanks and more than forty infantrymen to fight off twenty of the humans and one of their monsters._

_All three of the tanks fired simultaneously at the monster, and red and yellow explosion struck at the monster mech's head, torso, and abdomen. But it took only a second for the monster to emerge out of the smoke with a shit-eating grin on its face. But it had taken damage. Several of his blocky teeth, which really looked less like a teeth as it was connected to the "skin-armor" of the mech, had fallen out from the strikes. One of the plate armors on its chest had fallen off, and multiple one foot-sized metal shards had pierced its flesh. Its abdomen was the same._

_The tanks fired once more before the monsters made halfway between them, and its left chest blew out under the explosive shell._

_The infantry, on the other hand, were less durable ... but much more agile. They flew up with personal jetpacks at ridiculous speeds, only to slam back down right on top of some of the batarians' infantry. The soldiers slammed down by the humans would die almost instantly from being crushed. Other human troopers would charge in with a energy shield, and bash whatever obstacle away save for anything bigger than a float mobile._

_But they were still in range of the tank shells._

_And the tanks fired._

_The first human trooper to die was struck by the shell right at his chest, and my ... did they blow up like any other species._

_Taking cue from the lead tank, other two tanks fired regardless of accuracy. After twenty more rounds, the humans had been blown to bits._

_And the batarians would have celebrated had it not been for eight monsters less than half a kilometer away from them running on all four towards them._

* * *

><p><em>Colonel Abbus Tiklaya was in charge of the Twenty-Seventh Oragnic Mech(OM) Regiment. His assignment, however, had been to acquire a surrender from the defender's commander as fast as possible.<em>

_So he had requested that his OM be launched to land right on top of their command center with drill claws given._

_So he had been launched, and so he landed._

_The moment he landed and got out of the protective shell, he had saw that he had crashed through what seemed to their planetary government building. There were pictures, statues, and more all around the walls ... probably all of them priceless. But he ignored all the riches, and dug down with his OM's drill claw activated._

_After four hours of digging and a kilometer, he had broken through multiple layers of their base._

_Then he broke through the final layer and found them._

_The moment he caved into what seemed to be a forty-five meter high room -which was a good twenty meter taller than his OM- he was fired upon. His OM's skin armor plates (SAP's) held with ease, and he crushed those who seemed to be useless. Then when they tried to retreat through the only door in the command center, he activated his claw, and caved the exit._

_"Surrender!" he shouted through the comm not a moment later as he watched the batarians look at his OM in shock. The software downloaded to his OM translated his word into batarians._

_He was currently at the heart of the OM, connected neurally through his implant to control it. With it, he saw through OM's small eyes the shock of the batarians' faces. He cackled a little from where he really was in the heart of the OM._

* * *

><p><em>Uruhsav stared in incredulity. The monster had just spoke batarian. His first question had been "how" this monster spoke his people's language. <em>

_"Fuck off, you s-" one of his subordinates shouted and raised his rifle._

_He tried to stop him. "No, don't-!"_

_The soldier met a brutal end at the mech's drill-shaped finger. Then the monster turned to him. "You possess the highest ranking status stripes on your uniform. You must be the leader of the defender of this colony. Surrender."_

_Uruhsav stared at the monster for a few seconds before he did the only thing he could._

_"... As the commander of this colony, I, Lociidan Uruhsav, Feuda of the Wuisuva Colonial Army, surrender," he said quietly but loud enough for everyone to hear. He lowered down, dropped his sidearm, and put his hands behind his head as he stood back up. "Drop your weapons, we lost."_

* * *

><p><strong>Year 422<strong>

Batarian colony of Wuisuva surrendered within five hours of League operation to occupy the planet. The batarians' total loss of military life was estimated to be three hundred thousand lives and the total collateral damage was estimated to be seventeen billion in Citadel credits.

The Ashura League lost two frigates, hundred seventy troopers, nine OM's, and a single cruiser in the Invasion of Wuisuva.

Less than three months later, the Batarian Hegemony, with a quarter of its territories occupied and another quarter under siege and soon to fall, sent their envoy to the League to surrender.

* * *

><p>The meeting was to take place where the first clash had occurred, the G-N410X system. The system had already been turned into Ashura League's stage of invasion. Within the four months since the declaration of war, the system, which only had a Mass Relay as its artificial construct, now had variety of other structures... all of which were bigger than the system's two kilometer long Mass Relay.<p>

To the Hegemony ambassador Recaral nu Qiudav, the space station that the humans had put together was the most impressive of them. He noticed, from the bridge of the ship he stood on along with the ship's batarian captain, that the space station of the humans was not finished but it may as well have been. The space station was colossus; Ambassador Qiudav's omni-tool estimated that from its "horizontal" tip, it was more than a hundred kilometers long. The port of the space station alone was ten kilometers wide and two kilometers high, easily big enough to fit in nine of the Citadel Council's dreadnoughts.

But from reading the codex he received as well as the videos featuring the "titans" of the Ashura League, it was incredibly small. Actually, most of the human's "dreadnoughts" won't even fit in.

Dreadnought.

It was a term that made him confused now. The dreadnoughts built by Citadel Council races were all capable of powerful destruction; their main cannon, which was built along the spine of their ships in linear fashion (or rather, the ship was built around it), was capable of throwing out a shots of pure kinetic destruction. If one of the Citadel's dreadnoughts fired upon a planet with its main cannon, their would nothing but a crater left in its place.

And yet ...

Their name. Sure, it was capable was sure destruction, but it no longer held the same fear and revere he once had, for it had moved on...

And settled on their titan.

Titan was a fitting term for it. At least thirty kilometers long, they were massive human warships of raw destruction. They had multiple cannons on each of their sides -top and bottom included. Each of those cannons were almost as big as the Citadel dreadnoughts. The ambassador shuddered as he tried to imagine the sort of damage a titan can bring unto a battlefield.

He hoped that the humans had only few of those monsters.

"To think our privateers picked a fight with a monster like them," the captain muttered as he came up to the ambassador's side.

The ambassador gave the captain a glance from the corner of his eyes. "Indeed."

Within the very month of the war, the opinion within the Hegemony had divided immediately regarding the government's decision to provoke what seemed to be a nation who easily crushed the Hegemony's navy with little to no casualties of their own in comparison. By the end of the third month, factions had formed. The first of these was the old power, the Nobles and the Priests. They were stout forth with what they wanted: slaves and power. The priests less so than the nobles; the priests only wanted slaves to fill in the niche of servants that the Holy Stars demanded of them. Regardless, this faction, called the Conservatives, wanted to sue for peace, but as soon as peace was settled, go about the issue covertly to continue to enslave the human populace on the edge of the League's border.

The second faction was the regular populace and the military. They were the scared, wounded, and fearful. They had more to lose than the Conservatives, and the latter of the second faction had their lives to lose in battles they knew they could not win. They sued for peace and inward methods to make slaves, if slaves were necessary. This faction was called the Inward Methodist, or Breeders.

The third faction to form was composed to mainly neutrals. They had neither lost nor gained anything from the war. Most of these people came from the other side of the batarian territory. They wanted to sue for peace because by cold logical viewpoint, the Hegemony was going to lose. They were called the Cold Pacifists, or Coldies, for obvious reasons.

The captain that stood next to the ambassador was one such man, a Coldie. He lost a distant relative in the Battle for Wuisuva, but did not hold it against the humans -he barely knew his relative.

The ambassador knew that he was also one such ... Coldie, though he lost his wife's older brother in the Bloodbath of G-410X.

They were both chosen, the ambassador knew, because they were the more logical members of both the military and the politicians. The Hegemony as a whole sought peace.

'Now, it's a question of whether or not the humans want peace,' he thought as he sighed.

Just like the captain, he wondered about how stupid his race had been prior to the war. Actively picking fights with a race who no one had any idea about? Nothing about their traditions, their way of life, their military, their size?

He wanted to facepalm every time he remembered his kind's stupidity. But then again, slavers weren't slavers for their brain.

He sighed again as the captain went back to his command and began to contact the humans.

A holographic image link connected...

It was first time for most of the crew aboard _Star of Peace_, a diplomacy oriented spaceship of the Hegemony, to look upon the human._  
><em>

The human had patch of fur on top of their head. A pair of eyes. A single mouth with lips like the batarians and the asari. In fact, this ... human looked like what might be male asari, if such a thing could come to exist.

"State your business."

Well, that was cold.

The ambassador spoke up, and the holographic image was turned to face him. "I am ambassador Recaral nu Qiudav of the Batarians Hegemony. I am here to discuss peace terms."

The image fizzed out before it returned. "You have been sent co-ordinates in relation to your ship's current heading. Do not deviate from course," the image spoke before the link was cut.

* * *

><p>When Ambassador Qiudav stepped out of the ship, and onto the wide open space port of the human's space station. As he had expected, it was large enough to house Council's version of dreadnoughts; he saw one of the batarians' own wrecked up dreadnought being salvaged in the far corner.<p>

"Sorry about you having to see your own ship like that."

The ambassador turned to his right to look at the owner of the apologizing voice, and saw an asari with fur -_human female_- standing there. She stood at 1.6ish meters with a slender figure that Qiudav only saw in asari supermodels. She wore flowing red robes with sewed in designs of a long golden, reptile that reached down to her ankles and tied at her mid section by a wide sash. Her sleeves opened up wide, and she pressed them together to make a loop with her arms. Her clothes differed heavily with the armored and intimidating human soldiers behind her, who were all towering over her by a good thirty centimeter to half a meter. Actually, Qiudav thought it appropreiate. She, who he assumed was sent here to greet him, was dressed to impress.

When she saw that his attention on her, she bowed a little, which he mimicked.

Ambassador Qiudav was a bit confused. While there were wide variety of designs back in the Hegemony between planets and societies within those planets, there were at least some similiarities. Here though, he saw none between the soldiers and the ambassador.

"Welcome to the Rinevatis, Ambassador Qiudav."

And that sent the said batarian on edge. How did she (was this human a she?) knew about his name? On top of that, how was she speaking in perfect batarian without the need of a omni-tool to translate for her?

She laughed, and it sounded like tiny bells. "Don't fret, sir. We only accessed information on your kind from the ships we captured and the prisoners we took, or in some case, people we freed," she said, but the way she tilted her head forward just slightly and looked at the ambassador with steel in eyes suggested the ambassador to avoid making a scene over what she had said.

"Very well, but I must ask how you speak in perfect batarian," he inquired with a smile.

She smiled back with a look that said "Why, it's obvious!"

"I downloaded the language into my head."

* * *

><p><strong>DUN DUN DUN<strong>

**Well, that's the first chapter of my new story,_ Usurpers of Balance_. **

**Now, before I say good bye, I must point few things out.**

**1) I have read fanfictions, wikia, and other sources regarding Mass Effect series, but I never played it myself.**

**2) I know that EVE Online takes place more than fifteen thousand years after the Mass Effect by timeline alone. I will explain how they made it back to the home of the humans ... if this was the home of the ancestors of the humans of the Ashura League.**

**3) Protheans! I though, they're extinct except one ... but I actually see that as a flaw. They couldn't build a single facility or ship capable or regenerating power to keep their people alive in stasis when they were advance enough to give the Reapersa decent fight -a lost fight from the start due to collapse of their empire via mass relay netowrk collapse, but decent fight nonetheless. So I brought them back, but only in small numbers.**

**4) This is to EVE fans! I know that clone technology is not truly perfected in EVE Online(look at Jove), so I just fixed it in here.**

**5) Batarians! Not Turians. The galaxy's "superpower" still stands tall, instead of having fallen or humiliated. **

**6) Population growth of the Ashura League. Cloning facilities, though less used, were still used til the 300's, and population has exponential growth when provided enough space and food, which was given with technology that the capsuleers had. So people fuck, reproduce, and more people are introduced thanks to cloning technology and population. And bam! It eventually reaches a point where quarter of a billion are birthed every year.**

**7) EVE Online has ships that reach to 32 km. These are titans. Their dreadnoughts are more than 3 km in length alone. Battleships are around 1 km. **

**8) Firepower between "new" EVE ships and ME ships. ME sure has more firepower with their dreadnoughts' main cannon, but they can't fire as fast as the EVE ships can. They may fire one 38 kiloton of TNT in the span of time EVE's battleship spews out same amount while dodging, and let's not forget those lovely drones...**

**That's all I gotta say. Thanks for reading this, and hope to see you next time.**


	2. The Treaty and the War

**Thanks for all of the reviews. (:3)**

**Now, here are some answers and notes to your comments and questions.**

* * *

><p><strong>Guest (Nov 12):<strong>  
><strong>...Titans are 12 km...<strong>

Well, I do know that in-game, the in-game ship viewer say all of the titans are 12 km, but so do the ship viewer say about the length of frigates despite the fact that all of the frigates are visibly different in size. So I sniffed around here and there until I found a video: Eve Online - Shipsizevideo. You could find this at youtube, and is the basis for the sizes of ships that I use.

Also, technology advanced for the Ashura League for the past 400 years. It wouldn't make sense for the size of ships -and the designs- to remain same, now would it? Thanks for reviewing though. I should've put that in some kind of manner to let it be known.

**Mister Cuddlesworth:**  
><strong>...EVE tech shouldn't be able to take out a stronghold that easily...<strong>

I would agree if there hasn't been any advancement in Ashura League since their founding, but they have advanced. I would attribute large part of the victory to shock-and-awe warfare as well as the tactical advantage that OMechs provide.

Please note that they dug constantly for hours on end to get through the fortress.

**FranticHamster:**  
><strong>...Need Beta...<strong>

Indeed, English is not my first language, and I do feel bad if my grammar, spelling, or any other mistakes do make the reading a bit harder than it needs to be. I also think I made more grammar mistakes in the fist chapter than I did in any other chapters of any other stories.

I still don't understand how I aced the English portion of the ACT.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note! (MUST READ)<strong>

**1. Size of Galaxy: **  
>Milky Way is estimated to have 200-400 billion(yes, a very small difference...) stars. In this fiction, the number will stay the same.<p>

**2. Position of Factions:**  
>Consider the Citadel Council and those they know to be in "inner" galactic regions, because if you look at the map of the Milky Way and compare to Mass Effect galaxy map, you'll notice that the Norma Arm has its length cut off in half by not having its Outer Arm shown up. Yup, a whole spiral arm of the galaxy missing from the Mass Effect universe. That's where the Ashura League plays around along with the smaller capsuleer alliances.<p>

**3. Batarian Culture:**  
>...No one knows this shit. There is no information available aside from the fact that Batarians have slaves as intricate(?) part of their society. So I have to research, improvise, and create some parts of their culture from scratch without just copying off the turians' "spirits" all the time. But I will have some batarians say it because cultural exchanges do give "births" to individuals who use parts of culture that they were not born into. I will have some info at the end regarding quirks and other things about their culture. I did get help from StarSerpen for this, but in the end, I decided the culture needed to be made.<p>

Ugh, I sound so arrogant right there. "A culture needs to be made." What am I, a megalomaniac?

Anyway, I will have the Hegemony be its namesake, a hegemony of Batarian interstellar nations under one iron fist rule. The End.

**4. Ship Sizes:**  
>I based it on one of the videos I found since ingame ship viewer is clunky. Look up below on youtube.<br>Eve Online - Shipsizevideo

* * *

><p><strong>5. Technology:<strong>  
>Hmm... This one is more technical. To start off, ME weaponry. We know what their mass accelerator does ... but not each individual weapon's output, so we'll set that aside. Their dreadnought's mass acceelrator does 38 kilotons of TNT worth of KINETIC damage, which is <em>the worst <em>damage type you could apply to EVE shieldings as most shields have very high resistance to it.

**Then they have regular weaponry like missiles. I ain't even gonna talk about that. I'm just gonna talk about projectile related.**

Now, EVE Online. EVE has four types of "damages" a ship can deal. Kinetic, thermal, explosive, and EMP. The Caldari State, basis of most tech of the Ashura League, focuses on kinetic, but it does not mean they don't have other types. One of the most used ammunition by the capsuleers of EVE Online is _antimatter _hybrid charges, which translate to kinetic + thermal damage. May as well add in explosion as well for logic's sake; antimatter+matter = explosion.

**In current EVE Online timeline, the dreadnoughts -not the titans- carry around and fire 700 tons of TNT every 7 seconds according few of the sources I looked up... What would capital ship-class missiles do then every 10 seconds? Sure, the ME DR's can do much more damage with their spinal mass accelerator, but can they target like EVE ships? ME DR's must align with their target to fire. EVE DR's? Pfft, let the turrets aim on their own and fire. Can the ME DR's turn as fast they need to fire? Probably not as fast as EVE frigates, cruisers, and battleships equipped with afterburners or micro warpdrives can dance around them.**

So I did a little calculations. EVE Online's most famous DR (you can dispute this but I'm using this one) Naglfar, a knife-like dreadnought (DR), has total HP of 515,625 points at its most basic level(this calculation COMPLETELY disregards EVE Online's shield, armor, and hull resistance to certain type of damage). A capital ship's full "broadside" of railguns using antimatter XL(most dmging projectile ammunition) deals 2,853 damage at base level without boosts and other shit on the side. If 2.8 k dmg = 700 tons of TNT, a DR, NOT A TITAN, can tank 126 megatons of TNT easily. But that's only worth like ... 4 hits from ME DR's MA hits or three Tsar Bomba?

Another side note: All of the EVE damages are written in BASE LEVEL and BASIC AMMUNITION AND BASIC (if not large) RAILGUNS. Capsuleers training skills improve these damage and they use better railguns, missile launchers and blasters. The resulting damage is much more than 3k and the shield is more than 515k. There are things called Tech II weaponries and ammunitions in EVE Online that does much more damage than their tech I cousins. I'm using TECH I for calc. If I put in a regular capsuleer's damage input, then that 700 tons of TNT easily jumps up to a kilo or two. Add on the damage type of the ammuniton -excluding kinetic- then

**So in firepower alone, ME wins with their dreadnoughts. But EVE Online ships (which is BEFORE this story by 400 years and subsequent researches and improvements that happened in said 400 years) can dance around them with their maneuverability and larger arsenal or weapons, and EVE ships also have better tank. To note, the EVE titans and DR's can't move as fast as their smaller cousins can, but they'll take a beating before they go down. **

Fyi, EVE factions can easily mass produce stealth bombers just for kicks and campaigns. Mass Effect factions ... can't. Element Zero, the source of all of the mass drives of ME ships, is expensive as fuck. It broke Asari economy to make their _Destiny Ascendancy_(is that the correct name?). Amarr Empire, one of the empires of EVE Online, which is situated in a galaxy with only 5k stars max compared to Milky Way's 5 billion, has (according to one of the trailer videos) enough dreadnoughts to line-up the walkway for their empress's coronation ceremony ... And the video also shows 32 titans in the background.

**And titans cost ... 20 times more to build than dreadnoughts. Ouch. With maybe 500 solar systems, Amarr has 32 titans and more than 500 dreadnoughts. Woooo...**

But that's me being unfair to ME. ME's territories are all based around Mass Relays, since they can't make one even after two thousand years (the fk?), but even then it has to be bigger than a thousand stars total, right!? Relay 314 denotes that there are at least 314 relays including said relay, which means at least 314 stars connected to Mass Relay. (Never understood that part of ME universe. 2k years, and they're still at the same place (roughly) as they were with the tech they researched years beforehand? Are all these races except humans dumbfucks? Sure, they had several decades upon decades of war, but still, even after that, they have at least one thousand five hundred years to advance! Or are Salarians really not what they seem to be?)

**Regardless, EVE is a better fighter... Now give them 300 years of peace and research and then 100 years of conflict (capsuleer fighting each other or the Devan-Vjuuskar Rebellion) to harden them up.**

GG Mass Effect

**GG**

* * *

><p><em>[<strong>Enjoy<strong>]_

* * *

><p><span><em><strong>Chapter 1:<strong>_  
><em><strong>Treaty of Rinevatis 422 SY<strong>_  
><em><strong>&amp;<strong>_  
><em><strong>Gold Graveyard War<strong>_

* * *

><p>"You ... downloaded the language into your brain?" Ambassador Recaral nu Quidav of the Batarian Hegemony asked disbelievingly of the human greeter.<p>

The woman smiled. "Perhaps I or someone else will explain the meaning behind them, but for now though, we must be on our way." Slyly avoiding the topic, I see, the ambassador thought. "It would't do for our conversation to be picked up on 'public' grounds, now would we?" she stated with another dazzling smile.

But Qiudav was not a seasoned politician-made-diplomat for nothing. He read the lines underneath the human female's statement: It's time for negotiation, not questioning or learning.

He nodded. "Lead the way."

She turned around, and gestured for the ambassador, her escort, and the ambassador's escorts (four Batarian marine) deeper into the space station. "Oh, and please don't touch anything."

* * *

><p>Qiudav knew that he was right about the difference of culture the moment he entered deeper part of the space station. This part was designed as a communal area. There was a large, clear dome above with plenty of greenery alongside the tall buildings that littered the said area. 'And they built all this in less than half a year,' he thought as he walked past a golden spire-like building that contrasted sharply with a blue, ridged structure up ahead. "Your designs are very different," he commented idly as they moved on.<p>

The human greeter looked at him with that ever present smile. "Are the designs different vastly from your home?" she asked.

He looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "I thought your kind have already downloaded information regarding us."

She giggled. Damn, just hearing her laugh made him feel better. "We were only able to take data that were on your ships and few of the colonies we occupied. While there were large quantities of data regarding culture, language, military, and so forth that we were able to extract and decipher, your kind's culture still eludes us. And since design is part of culture, it has eluded us in turn. Most of the colony buildings were of one or two design, probably made as quickly as possible by few in charge of architecture. ... Sorry, I'm rambling off, but to your query, I will have to answer 'yes, we have,' but at the same time, 'not everything.'"

The ambassador stared at the greeter even as they walked, coming ever closer to the blue building in the center of the communal district. "You give away information rather eagerly."

She giggled. "I am contracted to the Ashura League Navy as a pilot and I have very few responsibilities outside of naval battles; everything I told you will have come to your hands sooner or later, and all of what I revealed to you are non-critical information. Had I said something really needed to be in secret, the big guys would have stopped me," she said, gesturing to the

Qiudav looked at her shocked. "You're a pilot?" he asked politely as possible.

The human female nodded. Will that smile ever go away? "I have been a pilot for the last twenty years. It's nothing compared to some of my friends and coworkers have under their belt, but I'm rather proud of it."

"Then I assume you participated in the battle in this very system...?"

She laughed. "No, no," she stopped talking for a second, looking forward. He did so as well, and saw why she stopped. They had arrived.

Up close, the building was grand as other structures the ambassador had the pleasure of seeing before. It was not like the bland skyscrapers found on homeworld nor was it as rough looking as the structures found in colonies. This building was tall, but not overly (being only around 300 meters high). The entrance was lit up like a light show, a easy green lightning that matched the dark blue of the building rather nicely.

"Our representative will meet you inside, but your guards will have to wait out here as will our guards."

Without a spoke command, the human marines all filed away and stood to the right side of the arch-like entrance.

Qiudav turned and nodded to his own marines, who filed slowly to the left side. Then he turned back to the human female.

"Let us enter."

* * *

><p>Qiudav stared at the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. There were ridig vein-like lights pulsing throughout the entirety of the corridor he was walking down, and he couldn't help but wonder if this was another one of the human designs or part of something more practical.<p>

They had walked in about two hundred steps with no other deviating corridors when they found themselves _outside _of the building and unto a small garden. There were plants of all sorts the batarian had never seen before as well as animals that seemed too strange to be true. His wonder, however, cut off when his eyes fell on the person that sat at the center of the garden.

A different race.

He stared at the four eyed alien before him before looking back to the humans. Too much difference. The humans had two eyes and fur on top of their head. The new alien had no fur. In fact, they were more like the other races the ambassador had come to know on the other side of the galaxy. The person was tall, around 1.9 meters, with a crest-like structure on the upper part of his head. The lower part of his head was red like a red star, but slightly darker. He wore a white naval uniform not too unlike the ones that the ambassador saw the Asari wear. He had three fingers, which was gripping a small cup with steaming liquid. The next biggest thing the ambassador saw once he got over the fact that the Ashura League must have more race members like the Citadel Council had was the fact that there was a thick cord rising out of the ground and being connected to a implant at the base of his head.

The man was not facing the two new entree's, however. Instead had his attention focused on something else that neither could see.

"No, I cannot grant such expansion of the business district without expanding the size of the residential district, which is already at its bare minimum capacity... Unfortunately, I have someone I must meet now. Alright, I'll see you later." Once he stopped talking, the cord attached to the implant disconnected by itself and slithered into the ground, hidden by the grass as to where it finally went.

The person stood up, and turned around. "Sorry about that. The conversation went longer than I originally intended. My name is Hudes Oneson. I am Ashura League's diplomat," he said, and spoke in perfect batarian as well. "Please," he said as he gestured to the open seat across from him. "Have a seat. This is where our negotiations will take place."

Qiudav nodded numbly, and he must have looked a bit ridiculous because the human female laughed once more. Diplomat Oneson, however, seemed to be exacerbated by the female's behavior.

"I assume the two of you are familiar with each other...?" he asked hesitantly. It was not a topic suited to negotiation tables, but ... eh, asking doesn't hurt... probably.

Diplomat Oneson looked at the batarian as if the man was a lunatic before he quickly realized that it was a batarian that he had been looking at. "Pardon her ... behavior. She's always like this."

The human female's laughter died down to a giggle. "Well, I brought him here, so I'll be going off!" she said with another smile before leaving through the way she and the ambassador came through.

The two men stared after her until she was gone from their sight. Oneson sighed. "I hate her, so much..."

"You seem to know her ... a lot," Qiudav replied as he walked over to the table, a modern stainless steel table equipped with holographic imaging system (or so it stated on the side of the table), and sat down on the chair offered just as Oneson himself sat down.

"You could consider her to be my ... younger sister. Found her all alone in an alley, starving to death more than forty years ago," Oneson replied. "But let's push that aside for later. While I may be exacerbated by my young sister, the Batarian Hegemony's surrender comes first."

Qiudav nodded. Straight to point, it seemed. "Very well. This is my government's surrender terms," he said as he uploaded the document in his omni-tool to the table by pulling out a cord that Oneson himself had pulled out from the side to show the batarian ambassador. Somehow, the cord's plug was exactly one would use to access omni-tools manually. 'Interesting,' he thought. 'They prepared this much in little to no time.'

Before he could become a man of politics, Ambassador Qiudav had to learn many aspects of politics itself, including culture of other races, supply and demands of politic nature, and history of all of the Council races and then some. Particularly, he had been most interested in history, and as a result, he was familiar with First Contact scenarios. He knew that Asari-Salarian first contact had been wishy-washy at best, as omni-tools and its fast language translation (as there was no need for one) did not exist. Council-Turian First Contact had been tense as -once again language barrier in place-

Oneson used the table's holo projector to pull up the document in front of him. Instead of the orange hue that Qiudav was familiar with, the hologram was blue without a single edge of static. The man read through fourteen page worth of surrender terms in less than a minute, and re-read them.

"Unacceptable," he stated with a frown before looking Qiudav directly in the eyes.

Qiudav raised an eyebrow. "On which part?"

"On multiple. One, Clause 2 states that all of the current slaves will remain in the hands of the Hegemony. This will have to go away, or it'll be continued war; it's freeing the slaves you took that we have started this war," he said. "Let me remind you that we have already freed all of the slaves on the planets we occupy, and have dealt with those who we deem as inhumane 'masters.' Two, Clause 3.2 states that the batarians will compensate in Citadel Council credits. We don't use your council's credits nor are we interested in receiving such a lower valued currency nor their values. Three, Clause 4 is just straight up bullshit. No more war declaration for the next 100 years? Let me make this clear to you, ambassador. If you wrong us in anyway, it'll be war no matter what. Continued hostility will mean subjugation of entire Hegemony til we shatter it."

Qiudav narrowed all four of his eyes. "Is that a threat to destroy our way of life?"

Oneson glared in return. "It's a threat if it hurts us. You can do whatever you want in your territory. Bring it outside and into ours, it'll be guns you'll be seeing next. This also means that if batarian _slavers _enter our territory, we'll deem you responsible."

Qiudav stood up. "You can't do that! We have no control over ever single one of our citizens!"

Oneson scoffed. "Time for you to get to work then," he said as he flickered on the screen, and scrolled down. Then he closed it, and brought out another document, and sent this one to Qiudav's omni-tool via the same route the Hegemony's surrender terms came. "This is the League's terms for your surrender and peace."

Qiudav quickly opened the newly received document and frowned at the document's shortness. Also, compared to the Hegemony's packed four page surrender terms, this was loosely made with only two pages done. That meant less detail and more loopholes.

He read on, nonetheless.

_**Ashura League's First and Last Terms for Surrender**_

He immediately frowned at the title. 'Ancient Stars, please let the Hegemony not be a client state or shattered by the terms.' After a slow, deep breath, he began to read them.

_**1. Effective immediately after acceptance and signatures of the parties, the Batarian and Hegemony and the Ashura League will have truce. This truce will last for the next decade.**_

'Good start...'

_**2. Batarian Hegemony will release all of the slaves captured in the past five standard Ashuran years.**_

'Not good...'

_**3. Batarian Hegemony will enforce patrols along Batarian-Ashuran border systems. Any batarian slavers found in Ashura League's territory will be executed unless those in question surrender immediately, in which case, they will be returned to the Hegemony with only the clothes on their body. Any Ashura League illegals found in batarian territory will be treated the same.**_

_**4. All forms of technology that belonged to the Ashura League at one point will be returned. If any cache of technology is found in batarian territory afterward, for every seventy pieces of technology found, rounded up, Batarian Hegemony will pay 10% of its income or its equivalent. Should the Hegemony refuse to pay or miss payment by "sent" date, then Ashura League will seize goods for compensation, and these may include territory, ships, goods, materials, and military rights.**_

_**5. For the duration of the truce, the Ashura League will be given military access to batarian territory.**_

_**6. The mining rights in the list of systems below will be given to the Ashura League.**_

**_7. Batarian Hegemony will pay a sum of a billion Interstellar Kredits, or its material equivalent over the next fifty years._**

Ambassador Qiudav frowned. "This is-"

"Unacceptable? You make it sound like the Hegemony was the one who won the war," Oneson cut the ambassador off with a snarl. "Please remember how this war came to be, sir. It was not us that attacked you, the Hegemony, but the Hegemony funded pirates that attacked us. We tried to talk with you, but you shot at us when we went to you with the proverbial olive leaves of peace. It was your nation that provoked us, not the other way around. You should be thankful that this is the only thing we're demanding of you.

"In most cases of war, we shatter our enemies so that they can never fight back, and then slowly eat them up. So accept what's in front of you, or leave to continue the war, _ambassador_. Our League is not a very forgiving type, nor do we believe in second chances when it comes to international matters." There was a pause as the League Ambassador stopped himself before he leaned back into his chair and shrugged. "Yeah, it could have been worse."

'Definitely, but by how much?' Qiudav thought to himself before voicing it out. "What exactly would be worse?"

Oneson stopped chuckling, which was dying down before, before fixing his eyes one for one on the batarian's eyes. He blinked a few times before he brought up a wide keypad, or keyboard(?), from his side of the table, and typed in a few times.

"Even before my race, the Protheans, were saved from extinction and made citizens of the League, the League had been as powerful as we see it today, my dear ambassador. But they weren't without their share of trouble..."

* * *

><p>"Even before my race, the Protheans, were saved from extinction and made citizens of the League, the League had been as powerful as we see it today, my dear ambassador. But they weren't without their share of trouble..."<p>

Ambassador Oneson knew that talking about his own nation's weakness in front of another nation's ambassador was stupid. However, there was something to gain from releasing the information that follows it.

With a light "bip," a flat holo-video was projected in the middle of the table.

**Title: Rebels Being Executed.**

"The League has already had the courtesy to look over some of your nations' and your affiliate, the Citadel Council's history," Oneson began. "And I must say, they were bloody... but not as bloody as our own civil war."

The video played by itself. The first person to appear in it was a broadcaster with model attractive looks and ebony hair. Even Qiudav seemed to acknowledge her beauty. Then the image holding the broadcaster minituarized before numbers began to pop up to the right of the window.

"One billion and seventeen million dead."

Qiudav froze.

"Enough collateral damage to buy a planet and build a _metropolis _on its most prime estate."

Oneson's face hardened. "The rebel leaders? Burned to death at stake," he hissed, and on que, the image of seven men and women tied to metal posts being burned to death showed up. "Their followers who didn't surrender? Burned to death." Slowly, he leaned forward. "If your nation does not surrender...? The result would have ranged from shattering the Hegemony into hundreds of smaller nations to complete annexation." By the end of the sentence, he was standing up. "Those responsible for deaths of our people and the cause of the war before the war would have been tossed to pits of radiation chambers. At the very worst, we would simply blow up the stars of your worlds, and allow you to drift into the void.

"Do you understand where you stand, dear Ambassador Qiudav?"

* * *

><p>Qiudav understood. He understood it very well.<p>

The "negotiations" had gone well from his perspective, as the situation could have been far worse than what the League had demanded of the Hegemony. Indeed, now that he had more time to think, analyze, connect, and contemplate, the Hegemony got off rather easily.

His people, while weak in the overall galactic power, were still strong in their home ground. They had large enough of a navy to match the turians, ever since they left the Citadel Council, and dismissed the Treaty of Farxian from holding their naval power down. Indeed, while technologically inferior compared to the Asari, Salarians, and the Turians, the batarians knew and considered themselves to the 4th technologically superior and in possession of the second largest fleet.

The same fleet had been reduced to scrap metal with a single naval engagement.

They had pricked the proverbial Thresher Maw of the galaxy. Hidden, lying in wait, unknowing of the world outside but not caring until provoked, and the batarians had been the one to provoke the "humans" and the League. Oh, he had intellectually known how strong the League was compared to the Hegemony, but it hadn't truly set in until he went through everything. It was not their ships nor their marines that set the truth in, though. It was the words of a diplomat and a video of burning humans that set it in.

Burned at stake.

A cruel, unusual, and archaic form of punishment outlawed by all, forgotten by most.

The Hegemony, and by extension the rest of the galaxy, will have to tread lightly where the League was concerned... Or not tread at all if the League wanted them all dead.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Year 422<em>**

_The Batarian Hegemony and the Ashura League signed the Treaty of Rinevatis 422 SY, formally ending the Ashura-Batarian Contact War. The Batarian Hegemony lost several systems to the Ashura League and were responsible for paying heavy war reparations. After the war, the economists of both sides came together to see how the exchange rate would be._

_The results:_  
><em>1 ISK = 10.16 Hegemony Credits<em>  
><em>1 ISK = 3.04 Citadel Credits<em>

_This made resulted in the Hegemony having to repay the League a grand total of 10.2 billion Hegemony Credits, a sum worth the eight times Hegemony's annual budget._

_To make things worse for the Hegemony, many of the Ashura colonies and stations prohibited batarians from stepping foot upon their world/station. The Hegemony protested, but the League rebutted it by stating that it was not in charge of individual world's decisions, as that was the worlds' rights._

_Unknown__ to the Batarians, the League starts to colonize several systems between the Hegemony worlds where the Mass Relays did not exist._

* * *

><p><strong>Galaxy: Milky Way, Norma Arm<strong>  
><strong>Region: Inner Norma Arm (Lotus Sanctum)<strong>  
><strong>Cluster: Gold River<strong>  
><strong>System: NAGR-02-04<strong>  
><strong>Sovereignty: Golden Armada<strong>

**Date: 422.9.24**

NAGR-02-04, or Norma Arm-Second Cluster-Fourth Largest Star, or gleefully dubbed by the locals under the rule of the Golden Armada as Capsuleer Trade Hub (or Cap Hub, for short), was system filled with space stations and spaceship traffic. Situated in the Gold River cluster, which was on the inner portion of the Norma Arm, the Capsuleer Trade Hub got its name from much of its trade having to do with capsuleers, the masters of the chaotic and much unexplored regions beyond itself. Protected by treaties with powerful capsuleer alliances as well as the Ashura League, all of whom profited heavily from taxing traffic going into the Trade Hub, the system was where all equipments, civilians, colonials, spaceship, or anything else, went through to get to the Null-Sec Clusters.

The owner of this wealthy system was Golden Armada's Executive-King Parinii Gashiv, great-grandson of one of the Old Powers of the Ashura League.

Parinii Gashiv was a tall man, reaching six feet six inches when he stood up with straightened back. Like any other capsuleers, most of whom died at least once, he had baby white skin, no hair, and absolutely no scarring.

Why?

Because he was inhabiting the body of his clone. Clone whose specific designation was "Trade Hub Alpha."

Like most leaders and influential businessmen and women, Parinii had clones in important systems throughout the "known" clusters and regions. He viewed this specific clone as his second most important clone, as it was responsible for all of the businesses he performed in the very system that netted him 2 trillion ISK per Ashura Prime year (419 days).

Today, he was here on business, though unwilling as he had been. He had been on vacation with his mentor and "grandfather," Normes Gashiv, the first of the line, of the Old Powers, Lord of Planet Kyander, Lord of Planet Vissika, and Lord of Bellar Space Station. A very influential person even among the Old Powers, Parinii had been extremely happy to have some of his grandfather's time during the vacation to just enjoy each others' companies, as have the rest of the family had been.

But no... his goddamn secretary had to inform him that a Priority A customer was waiting for him in Cap Hub.

Reasonably so, he had some irritation flowing in his veins and showing on his strained eyes.

The clone bay opened, and Parinii fell forward. Several footsteps were quickly running up to him even before he began his fall. However, he had been through this many times.

Little after a second after his fall began, his left leg struck out instinctively in a wide arc before it along with the body continued to fall.

And touchdown, his feet and leg supported him from further fall, and his face did not meet the clone bay's metal ground... this time.

He slowly allowed his clone body to get used to moving once more as he crouched down, following the landing of his feet. Then with a huff, he stood back up.

"God damn it, it's fucking cold in here..." he hissed as someone threw a towel over his shoulders. He turned around to see Arialda Shepherd, his secretary.

"I always remind you, sir, that it is better for the clone bay's operation to keep it at this temperature," she remarked without even betting an eyelash to his naked physique. "And you always tell me that you don't have to like what's best for the clone bay."

Parinii scoffed. "Whatever. So why exactly did you call me from my vacation for?"

She tapped on the datapad she held before handing it over to her boss. "It's the information you've asked me for. One regarding the list of human slaves on former Batarian systems."

His demeanor changed quickly and took the datapad from her. He scanned through it for a second or two before letting out a roar of rage and tossing the datapad at the wall to his right. The datapad shattered like the crystal glass it was made out of.

She froze for a bit, shocked by her employer's uncharacteristic rage. "...Is something wrong?"

"They killed my grandchild!" he roared.

She flinched. 'Shit, there's going to be a bloodbath...' she thought as she made a quick prayer for the batarians. The said prayer only became more sympathetic in her mind as Parinii snapped his attention to her.

"Get my ship ready, and alert every goddamn capsuleers in the alliance... We're going to hunt!"

* * *

><p><em><strong>Year 423<strong>_

_The Golden Armada, one of the smaller capsuleer alliances -but also considered one of the most influential thanks to number of military treaties with most, if not all, of the top capsuleer alliances as well as the Ashura League itself- declared war upon all of the remaining Batarian Hegemony._

_The Batarian Hegemony, unwilling to take on another one of the capsuleers alone, quickly turned to the Citadel Council for aid, allowing all matters and forms of information to flow through where there had been little to none. _

_However, they were too slow. _

* * *

><p>The Golden Armada.<p>

Numbering at 12 titans, 51 dreadnoughts, 6,000 battleships, 40,000 battlecruisers, 104,000 cruisers, and 54,000 frigates, it was a fleet that most middle and lower tier capsuleer alliances would avoid fighting at all cost. Even higher tier capsuleer alliances, like B.O.B. who held more than three hundred titans, were not eager to fight them simply due to the Golden Armada's infamous hit-loot-and-run tactic. They were notorious for dragging out attrition in systems to the point that a loss of 50% of attacking navy was the norm before the Golden Armada's reinforcements and allies arrived.

The fleet known to be the most tenacious and vicious of all capsuleer alliances was in warp. Their entire fleet bound together by the warp bubble generated by the fleet's titans dragged them along the ageless, gapless void.

The ship spearheading them all was a horizontally hammer-like supercarrier christened _Calm_.

"ETA 5 minutes, sir," Arialda Shepherd reported as she stood by her captain's side with a data pad held in her arms.

"Are all titans ready to engage the cynosural field as soon as we drop warp?"

This time, it was the AI of the ship that answered him. "Yes, sir. All titan pilots are reporting green with the cynosural field generators."

The captain nodded. "Good," he let out a snarl. "This will be a sweet payback...!"

* * *

><p>The colony of Rewfes was a seemingly harmless colony.<p>

Because it was harmless colony. While it was one of the more important manufacturing powerhouses within the Batarian Hegemony, Rewfes rarely got visitors, slavers, administrators, or tourists, and as such, they had a reason to not have heavy defenses.

Now, the war with the humans had changed that. Rewfes had been upgraded to multiple levels in standby readiness should war come to them.

But as far as the cloaked recon cruiser's pilot was concerned, this colony was a sitting duck ... in vacuum.

_Ping ping ping_

He opened up his chat after hearing the alert.

_Operation Bloody Nose is a go._

His lips stretched out into a grin.

He decloaked his ship, which obviously alerted the Batarians of his presence if the sudden change in the movements of their meager patrol's heading was anything to take notice of, and activated his ship's cynosural generator.

The Batarian patrol ships were more than 200 clicks away when the entire fleet of the Golden Armada jumped through.

The pilot whistled as he appreciated the golden majesty of the fleet. His awe only increased to heights unknown when he saw the titans charge up their doomsday weapon for the first time in his capsuleer life.

And they fired.

The golden beams of energized death screeched forth like some giant bansheees of old. They missed the patrol ships, which weren't the targets, and flew straight towards the planet. They narrowed as the went further and further down until they impacted.

All beams landed on largest population center on the planet, the city of Rewfes.

The city, which was half a continent wide at 600 kilometers diameter, cratered like sponge.

* * *

><p><em>The capsuleers of the Golden Armada, along with several smaller alliances that the said armada hired, reached their border, and reduced the Batarian colony of Rewfes to ashes with orbital bombardments. <em>

_The Councilors and the Hegemony representative met the very next day after the destruction of Rewfes and the declaration of war._

* * *

><p>"Diplomat Eru'udis vaKan, it is a pleasure to meet you," Tevos greeted the Batarian as the man nodded back to her.<p>

"As am I, Councilor Tevos."

Sparatus just nodded, which the diplomat eagerly greeted back.

While the pleasantries were being exchanged, Valern, the Salerian Councilor, was analyzing the change in the behavior of the Batarian representative. Eru'udis vaKan was a very strong advocate for Batarian Hegemony's "rights" in any and all forums and legislations he appeared in. In fact, one could go far as to say that the representative was a anti-Council. He voted against the Council in many laws, even when voting yes in some of the Citadel local laws would personally helped him more.

He was rude, rough, inconsiderate jackass with four eyes to keep eyes on all Councilors and his own paper to sprout more nonsense.

But today, he seemed ... subdued. Very humble yet not overly.

Valern was concerned about that. He wanted to know what the diplomat was planning.

"Please, take us seat, sir," Tevos said, taking charge of this meeting. The rest of the councilors took their place behind their designated podiums while the Batarian diplomat stood across from them in the Council's meeting room. "Now, what was the reason behind your desire to meet us?" she asked candidly.

The Batarian diplomat fidgeted. "T-The Hegemony has come under attack from an unknown alien race," he quickly began. "We can't fight them off. We need your help..!"

There was a second after the bomb shell drop by the diplomat as the councilors' minds shut down and rebooted. Less than two seconds later, they were throwing questions at the Batarian while promising to help the Hegemony. After all, the Batarian Hegemony was part of the Citadel Council. It was the duty of the Citadel Council to uphold their treaties.

The Batarian diplomat gave them a twisted version of their encounter with human. How it had been the humans who assaulted their outer colonies and looted the homes of honest -if slaving- Batarians. How the Hegemony had lost so fast that they could not ask for help. Then he went on to talk about how the humans had launched another invasion, and the depleted resources of the Hegemony could not withstand them.

The Councilors took the explanation to their questions with some skepticism but promised to help the Hegemony nonetheless.

This was how the Gold Graveyard War began.


End file.
